Bathed in the Lake from the boat. It was brilliantly fine. R⸺ dipped her paddles in occasionally just to keep the boat from grounding. Then I clambered over the bows and stood up to dry myself in the sun like one of Mr. Tuke’s young men.
read them, and Madge (ah! that name!) said her father had never shown the least interest in them at which we laughed again, and the gamekeeper laughed too. He is such a jolly man—they all are delightfully simple, charming folk and we talked of Beasts and Birds that live on the mountains.
My 26th birthday. In London again. Went straight to the Doctor and reported myself. I quite expected him to forbid the marriage as I could scarcely hobble to his house. To my amazement, he apparently made light of my paralysis, said it was a common accident to bruise the os coccyx, etc.
Am staying at ⸻ for a few days to rest and try to be better by that fateful 11th, when I am married.
Later: My first experience of a zeppelin raid. Bombs dropped only a quarter of a mile away and shrapnel from the guns fell on our roof. We got very panicky and went into a neighbour’s house, where we cowered down in our dressing-gowns in absolute darkness while bombs exploded and the dogs barked.
I was scared out of my life and had a fit of uncontrollable trembling. Later we rang up ⸻ and ⸻, and thank Heavens both are safe. A great fire is burning in London, judging by the red glare. At midnight sat and drank sherry and smoked a cigar with Mr. ⸻, my braces depending from my trousers like a tail and showing in spite of dressing-gown. Then went home and had some neat brandy to steady my heart. H⸺ arrived soon after midnight. A motor-omnibus in Whitechapel was blown to bits. Great scenes in the city.
Very nervy today. Hobbled down the road to see the damage done by the bombs.
A swingeing cold in the head through running about on the night of the raid. Too feeble to walk far, so Mrs. ⸻ went into the town for me and purchased my wedding-ring, which cost £2 5s. 0d.
Part III
Marriage
This evening we walked through the Churchyard reading tombstone inscriptions. What a lot of men have had wives!
I can’t make out what has come over folk recently: the wit, wisdom and irony on the old tombstones have given place to maudlin sentiment and pious Bible references. Then on the anniversary of the death the custom among poorer classes is to publish such pathetic doggerel as the following—cuttings I have taken from time to time from the local newspaper in ⸻:
“Her wish:
“ ‘Farewell dear brother, Mother, sisters,
My life was passed in love for thee.
Mourn not for me nor sorrow take
But love my husband for my sake
Until the call comes home to thee,
Live thou in peace and harmony.’ ”
Again:
“A day of remembrance sad to recall
But still in my heart he is loved best of all
No matter how I think of him—his name I oft recall;
There is nothing left to answer me but his photo on the wall.”
Or:
“One year has passed since that sad day,
When one we loved was called away.
God took her home; it was His will,
Forget her?—No, we never will.”
These piteous screeds fill me with loving-kindness and with contempt alternately in a pendulum-like rhythm. What is the truth about them? Is the grief of these people as mean and ridiculous as their rhymes? Or is it a pitiful inarticulateness? Or is it merely vulgar advertisement of their sorrow? Or does it signify a passionate intention never to forget?—or a fear of forgetting, the rhymes being used as a fillip to the memory? Or—most miserable of all—is it just a custom, and one followed in order to appear respectable in others’ eyes? Are they poor souls? or contemptible fools?
There is a ridiculous Cocker spaniel at the house where we are staying. He must have had a love affair and been jilted, or else he’s a sort of village idiot. The landlady says he’s not so silly as he looks—but he looks very silly: he languishes sentimentally, and when we laugh at him he looks “hurt.” Today we took him up on the Down and it seemed to brighten him up. Really, he is sane enough, with plenty of common sense and good manners. But he is kept at home in the garden so much, lolling about all day, that as E⸺ said, having nothing to do, he falls in love.
The Saturday Review writes:
The effect of the “Brides and the Bath” Case on people with any trace of nice feeling is perhaps not particularly mischievous, though the thing is repulsive and hateful to them. … To gloat over the details of repulsive horrors, simply from motives of curiosity—this is bad and degrading.
What a lot of repulsive things the nice refined people who read the Saturday Review must find in the world just now. For example the War. “Simply from motives of curiosity.” Why certainly, no other than these, concerning one of the most remarkable murders in the annals of crime. And murders anyhow are damned interesting—which the Saturday Review isn’t.
Chipples
I was surprised to discover the other day that when I talked of Chipples no one understood what I meant! It proves to be a dialect word familiar to all residents in Devonshire and designating spring onions. Anyway you won’t find it in Murray’s Dictionary; yet etymologically it is an extremely interesting word and a thoroughly good word with a splendid pedigree. To wit:
Italian: Cipollo.
Spanish: Cebolla.
French: Ciboule.
Latin: Caepulla, dim. of caepa (cf. cive,
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